Sulphur and metals are commonly found combined in the mineral regions.  But this rule is not universal; for they are also frequently in a separate state.  There is not, perhaps, a metal, among the great number which are now discovered, that may not be found native, as they are called, or in their metallic state.

Metallic substances are also thus found in some proportion to the disposition of the particular metals, to resist the mineralising operations, and to their facility of being metallised by fire and fusion.  Gold, which refuses to be mineralised with sulphur, is found generally in its native state.  Iron, again, which is so easily mineralised and scorified, is seldom found in its malleable state.  The other metals are all found more or less mineralised, though some of them but rarely in the native state.

Besides being found with circumstances thus corresponding to the natural facility, or to the impediments attending the metallization of those different calces, the native metals are also found in such a shape, and with such marks, as can only agree with the fusion of those bodies; that is to say, those appearances are perfectly irreconcilable with any manner of solution and precipitation.

For the truth of this assertion, among a thousand other examples, I appeal to that famous mass of native iron discovered by Mr Pallas in Siberia.  This mass being so well known to all the mineralists of Europe, any comment upon its shape and structure will be unnecessary[8].

[Note 8:  Since this Dissertation was written, M. de la Peyrouse has discovered a native manganese.  The circumstances of this mineral are so well adapted for illustrating the present doctrine, and so well related by M. de la Peyrouse, that I should be wanting to the interest of mineral knowledge, were I not to give here that part of his Memoir.

“Lorsque je fis inserer dans le journal de physique de l’annee 1780, au mois de Janvier, une Dissertation contenant la classification des mines de manganese, je ne connoissois point, a cette epoque, la mine de manganese native.  Elle a la couleur de son regule:  Elle salit les doigts de la meme teinte.  Son tissu parait aussi lamelleux, et les lames semblent affecter une sorte de divergence.  Elle a ainsi que lui, l’eclat metallique; comme lui elle se laisse aplatir sous le marteau, et s’exfolie si l’on redouble les coups; mais une circonstance qui est trop frappante pour que je l’omette, c’est la figure de la manganese native, si prodigieusement conforme a celle du regule, qu’on s’y laisseroit tromper, si la mine n’etoit encore dans sa gangue:  Figure tres-essentielle a observer ici, parce qu’elle est due a la nature meme de la manganese.  En effet, pour reduire toutes les mines en general, il faut employer divers flux appropries.  Pour la reduction de la manganese, bien loin d’user de ce moyen, il faut, au contraire, eloigner tout flux, produire la fusion, par la seule violence et la promptitude